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The NCAA has sued Electronic Arts and the Collegiate Licensing Company over its proposed settlement with student athletes from late September, Bloomberg reported. The $40 million settlement was in regards to the use of student athlete likeness, an ongoing legal dispute that stemmed back to May 2009. As a result of the string of lawsuits, EA canceled its college football game that was set to launch in 2014, which started with the NCAA's decision to not renew its licensing contract with the publisher in July.

Filed in a Georgia state court on November 4, the lawsuit from the NCAA alleges that EA did not agree to compensate the NCAA for losses related to legal claims from student athletes, and that the publisher did not have liability insurance to do so. EA's proposed $40 million settlement would negate the company's contractual obligations to idemnify the NCAA for any liability and attorney fees related to the lawsuits.

We have contacted both EA and the CLC for comment.

Unless JJ Abrams does something so spectacular and most of all so charming with his Star Wars sequels that my 15 years of ennui towards the house that Lucas built then liberally daubed with some sort of turd-based paint, I can’t say I have any particular issue with EA being sole providers of Galaxy Far, Far Away games for the next decade. There’s plenty of other science-fiction, you know, though in fairness not much of it is afforded the same kind of budget as Star Wars stuff enjoys. But if you were holding out hope for an Obsidian-developed Knights of the Old Republic 3, or fun little experiments from random indie chancers, you probably shouldn’t, given the 10 year deal between EA and Disney likely covers the full span of Episodes VII-IX and thus is likely to be very focused on whatever they do.(more…)

The plot, it thickens – like an ultra-syrupy plot milkshake or a rail-thin wisp of a plot that’s been secretly lifting plot weights for plot months. A few weeks ago, EA announced that it had canceled EA Victory’s free-to-play Command & Conquer pseudo-reboot and closed down the studio altogether. This left the series’ future very much in doubt, especially given that Victory had been established largely for the sole purpose of propelling the storied war machine ever onward. But now Blue’s News has dug up a rather interesting tidbit: an EA support statement on refunds (posted not long after) specifically mentions that previously activated early beta access “will be honored once production of this title resumes under a new studio.” Good news? Kinda! But it’s also rather sad, when you think about it.

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Did you know that there are ships in Star Wars? It’s true! I was under the impression that everyone just skywalked everywhere (I mean, why else would anybody name someone that?), but nope, space ships. They fire lasers, too – colorful bouquets of molten, flesh-searing doom. Delightful. It’s like a giant, often fatal rave up there, the raddest of space parties. Don’t believe me? Well then, you’ll just have to watch this trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic: Galactic Starfighter: The Coloning.

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This might be the wrong crowd for this, but I thought the recent SimCity was a good game. I’m looking forward to playing the Cities of Tomorrow expansion. I’m glad it’s out today, and I like this intro trailer.

Come on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Want to fight me? Let’s take this below.(more…)

Here's the opening cinematic to upcoming expansion SimCity: Cities of Tomorrow, where every home is always online. Although the cities of tomorrow appear to be the same lot size as the SimCities of today, at least you can build it up vertically.

Just in time for the next-gen release of Madden NFL 25, lo and behold, here's my check from the settlement of the ridiculous Madden 'monopoly' lawsuit—for $64.14, which is four cents less than what the game would cost, with tax, at any of the GameStops I frequent.Read more...

Today you may have felt a slight aftershock from a downright seismic shift over in console land. You know that Titanfall man/robo-shoot/parkour everyone (including yourself) can’t stop making enthusiastic word-gurgles about? Well, it’s no longer a timed Xbox exclusive. Now it’ll always stomp around in Microsoft’s impossibly green pastures, and Sony will just have to hope the numerically confused giant doesn’t lock down a potential sequel as well. But what about little old us? Are we out of luck as well? Turns out, nope, we’re a-okay. I got in touch with Respawn in fear of potential delays and arbitrary requirements for Titanfall’s PC version, and the developer quickly put my worries to rest.

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Electronic Arts has budgeted $40 million to settle lawsuits brought by college football players against its NCAA Football series, which EA Sports canceled last month. The publisher reported the figure to investors today. Though the settlement has yet to be made public, the figure is consistent with rumors reported in late September.Read more...

EA's FIFA series has generated over $145 million in digital net revenue in the first half of fiscal 2014, a period that stretched from April 1, 2013 through September 30, 2013. The news came from EA's Q2 2014 earnings report, and was derived on a non-GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) basis.

EA reported that FIFA's digital revenue saw an increase of 25 percent over the first half of fiscal 2013. The publisher reported $70 million in digital revenue from FIFA 13 in the first quarter of 2013. FIFA 14 launched at the end of September. The game features legendary soccer players in its popular Ultimate Team mode on Microsoft consoles, which accounts for a chunk of its digital revenue sales.

Well now, here’s a surprise. I knew some players weren’t altogether on board with EA’s latest Command & Conquer pseudo-reboot, but I had heard decent-ish things by and large. Apparently, however, the nay-screamers outnumbered the yea-sayers, because EA’s elected to reduce the whole project to a shower of raining, Frostbite-3-friendly rubble. But that’s just the beginning, er, of the end. In addition, EA is completely disbanding and shutting down longtime RTS studio EA Victory. A sad day indeed.

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The Sims 4‘s big new feature is that your sims’ emotions unlock context-sensitve actions and change their abilities. That means, as an example, that depressed sims make better novelists. I am here today to confirm that being sleepy and hungry does not make you better at writing game news on the internet. Also, that The Sims 4 is due out next Autumn, as picked up by Blues News.(more…)

The next patch for Madden NFL 25 is on the way, EA revealed in a blog post. The title update promises "improved stability" across all game modes and addresses a number of gameplay concerns had by players, such as the frequency of injuries and the ability to truck through tackles being tuned too high. Additionally, players were previously being awarded wins without completing solo challenges in Madden's Ultimate Team mode - another bug being squashed in the upcoming patch.

Among the Connected Franchise mode tweaks the title update is expected to fix is the accelerated clock issues found in head-to-head games, as the play clock would not automatically wind down when being set that way in the game's career mode. The patch also addresses a bug in which some athletes from imported draft classes would not have facemasks on their helmets, which just sounds like a group of rookies that prefer to live dangerously to us.

We've contacted EA to find out when the patch is expected to arrive and included the full list of fixes provided by the publisher after the break.

The more astute mathematicians among you will have calculated that this means Titanfall, aka What The Modern Warfare Creators Did Next, is due to arrive in March. March 11 for Americaland, March 13 for mainland Europe and March 14 for this e’er punished isle, to be exact. That’s a Tuesday, Thursday and Friday respectively, you know.(more…)

The Battlefield 4 beta is officially over, and DICE says the game is ready to launch on October 29. This limited period of time was more than enough for those who participated to capture hilarious moments and glitches and share them with us. Let's take a look.Read more...

In case you hadn’t heard/forgot/suffered from such a severe case of apathy that you did the human brain equivalent of a driver rollback, SimCity is going to the future. Yeah, it’s still gonna be tethered to the Internet’s infinite, un-flinching tangle of roots, but at least now you’ll have hover tech, environmentally friendly mega-towers, and curvy utopia buildings to compliment all your curved roads. Also, choking sink holes of pollution and corporate control, if a new video walkthrough of a potential city setup is any indication. Omega is a new resource that everyone and their ant-sized, Simlish-barking dog wants, and OmegaCo’s job is to build factories and franchises while also making sure we know its iron-fisted execs really, really liked Blade Runner.

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SimCity expansion "Cities of Tomorrow" will hold the foundations for future urban planners starting November 12. Here's Lead Designer Stone Librande giving a tour of the scientific discoveries your Sims will have access to for $30. That's the price of time travel nowadays.

FIFA 14 came out last month, bringing with it the set of updates we’ve come to expect from the yearly foot-to-ball series: slower running, better balls, new types of kicking, some new names of millionaires, four new lines of commentary which don’t make sense at first but, through mind-penetrating repetition, destroy cherished memories from your childhood and replace them with an image of Martin Tyler’s face, rotating, his eyes on fire, his mouth chanting some secret language.

Now there’s a patch that tweaks all of the above in slight but significant ways.(more…)

Over 33 games (some in bundles) from the Electronic Arts back catalog are on sale this weekend through GOG.com for $2.39 apiece, a 60 percent savings off the regular price. The sale includes classic franchises like Wing Commander, Ultima, Syndicate and Populous.

Also not to be overlooked are Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and Jade Empire. If decisions like this are too difficult, grab everything on the list for $84.07. Our rough guesstimate is that this would boil down to something like $0.06 per game hour.

Oh, and one more thing: Remember that you get The Witcher for free with any GOG purchase through October 17.

I missed the awkward moment when Peggle 2 was announced, and then there was the Xbone timed exclusivity thing. I should have been excited that there’s going to be more Peggle in the world, but I was mostly miffed. MIFFED! Mucho miffage is kind of my reaction to the videos below. Three character videos have been released, showing off Peggle masters Bjorn, Berg, and Luna. The characters are cute and nicely animated, but they also take up a large amount of the screen. Just call me Miffy.(more…)

THQ, which went out of business and was liquidated by the spring, still exists in enough of a form to sue the UFC and Electronic Arts, to whom THQ sold the UFC video game license in 2012.Read more...

Galactic Starfighter is SO the name of a videogame. Except it’s actually the name of expansion to a videogame, which I suppose is the same thing, albeit a subcategory thereof. Anyway, SWTOR steps into the spacebiff with “12v12 free flight combat”, which involves getting hold of a customisable starfighter and doing pew-pew in various locations around the SWTOR universe. And it looks okay! Or at least not completely terrible*. There are different deals within this expansion depending on whether you are a SWTOR subscriber, or a dirty freeloader, and those can be examined here, with the first wave of space dudes grabbing their space wings on November 1st.(more…)

Recorded and sped up on a PC, in spectator mode, YouTuber derbestefan's video shows a completely different Battlefield.Read more...

EA Maxis revealed today that it is exploring the possibility of adding a long-requested offline mode to its city-building strategy game SimCity.

"Right now we have a team specifically focused on exploring the possibility of an offline mode," Maxis Emeryville's General Manager Patrick Buechner said. "I can't make any promises on when we will have more information, but we know this is something that many of our players have been asking for."

Overloaded servers and other issues left many SimCity players unable to access the online-only game after its launch earlier this year. Responding to player feedback, Maxis later noted that SimCity's online connection requirements were essential to the game's operation, though rumored insider claims and player mods suggested otherwise.

"While the server connectivity issues are behind us, we would like to give our players the ability to play even if they choose not to connect," Buechner adds. "An offline mode would have the additional benefit of providing room to the modding community to experiment without interfering or breaking the multiplayer experience."

Buechner notes that Maxis is also looking into the possibility of expanding player city size, and has opened discussion regarding support for user-generated content.

The latest incarnation of Not Burnout Paradise 2 is Need For Speed Rivals, as Criterion continue to not quite make Burnout Paradise 2 in this other franchise. Announced in May, we’ve not checked in since, so here’s the latest footage to watch, feel hopeful about, but secretly wish it were Burnout Paradise 2.

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Believe it or not – despite EA and Maxis’ insistence on constant connection – SimCity has mods. Due to a lack of official tools, they’re not particularly elaborate, but people have managed to tinker around under the simplified simulation’s hunkered down hood. Before now, however, Maxis didn’t really acknowledge, well, any of it. But now, it appears that the developer has had a change of heart. It’s hoping to open up a dialogue with modders on its official forums, which is good news! Er, kinda. Problem is, there are still no plans for mod tools, and Maxis has no intention of changing whatever they want.

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The Battlefield 4 beta gets boots on the ground today on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC for the few, with the full rollout starting on Friday.

Today's beta includes those who are Battlefield 3 Premium members, Battlefield 4 Digital Deluxe Edition pre-order participants and registered owners of Medal of Honor Warfighter Limited Edition or Digital Deluxe Edition.

PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 Europe beta access should be live now, with the PS3 US version deploying between 6-10PM Eastern (3-7 Pacific).

You may not remember that Timothy Leary, the psychologist renowned for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs and a key figure of the 1960s counterculture movement, dabbled in video games development in the 1980s. Now a trove of games discovered inside hundreds of discs in Leary's archives will be playable at the New York Public Library.Read more...

Electronic Arts' settlement in the ongoing student athlete lawsuits dating back to 2009, filed yesterday, amounts to a $40 million, The New York Times reports. The settlement was announced after EA Sports GM of American Football Cam Weber revealed that the publisher's 2014 college football game has been canceled.

Among the cancellation of next year's game and the re-evaluation of its college football series, Weber said the publisher has "been stuck in the middle of a dispute between the NCAA and student-athletes who seek compensation for playing college football." While there's no word on how the settlement amount will be divided among the class, it will reportedly cost EA $40 million.

We've contacted the Lanier Law Firm's attorney on the case and EA for confirmation, and we will update as we learn more.

EA Sports will not publish any college football video game next year, the label said moments ago, citing ongoing litigation brought by current and former college players that threatens to change how all of big-time college sports does business.Read more...